Richard Heath House
60 Arlington Place, Buffalo, New York
On this page, below:
| Richard Heath, a stair builder. "The family moved around the corner to 69 Wadsworth Street (now demolished). He and his wife Jane came to Buffalo from England in 1866, and became naturalized in 1872. " - Dana Saylor |
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Year built: |
C. 1867 |
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Style |
Gothic Revival Cottage |
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Features: |
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Board-and-batten siding |
Note vergeboard on gable |
Note gingerbread trim in the tympanum of porch. |
Note gingerbread trim on side of porch and the Board-and-batten siding |
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Note label molding |
Eastlake style lathe-shaped wooden decoration |
December 2012 Exterior Photos
Heath House, #64 Arlington Pl.
Sometime in the 1880s one Jane Heath, who also owned the Italianate house next door at number 58 Arlington, added a porch to her home. Miss Heath apparently liked her front porch so much that she had it copied some years later on number 58.
Heath House, #64 Arlington Pl.
"A string-moulded verge board drips like rich icing from the eaves of the roof."
Heath House, #64 Arlington Pl.
"A modillon bracketed pediment incorporates an elaborate cut-out of twelve-spoke mandalas flying over a pattern-spool frieze interrupted by cut-out panels in an Alte Deutsche motif."
#58, with copied features.
"A modillon bracketed pediment incorporates an elaborate cut-out of twelve-spoke mandalas flying over a pattern-spool frieze interrupted by cut-out panels in an Alte Deutsche motif."
#64.
" he Stick-design balustrade recalls Chinese Chippendale fretwork. The ring-and-vase spindle turnings of the 17th century furniture are aped in the cut-out panels that cover the porch’s base."
#58
This charming house is the best example in Buffalo of the Gothic revival cottages that began to appear in rural and suburban America in the 1840s. Forever associated with Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852), who wrote much about domestic architecture and landscape gardening (and who numbered Lewis Allen among his correspondents), the board-and-batten cottage, trimmed with verge boards along the eaves and molded labels above the windows, was an attempt to adapt the decorative features and upright proportions of Gothic architecture to the modern dwelling.
Furthermore, the vertical boarding of the exterior walls was regarded by Downing and his followers as a more honest expression of the underlying structural frame than was the traditional horizontal clapboarding.
The delicately carved porch on this house, with its elaborately turned posts and reflections of Japanese taste, is a later addition, probably dating from the 1880s.
- Frank R. Kowsky, et al., Buffalo Architecture: A Guide, MIT Press, 1981.
Sometime in the 1880s one Jane Heath, who also owned the Italianate house next door at number 58 Arlington, added a porch to her home. What a porch it is!
A string-moulded verge board drips like rich icing from the eaves of the roof. A modillon bracketed pediment incorporates an elaborate cut-out of twelve-spoke mandalas flying over a pattern-spool frieze interrupted by cut-out panels in an Alte Deutsche motif.
Elaborately turned spindle posts are bracketed to the porch roof by jigsaw-cut brackets in a complex foliate design.
The Stick-design balustrade recalls Chinese Chippendale fretwork. The ring-and-vase spindle turnings of the 17th century furniture are aped in the cut-out panels that cover the porch’s base. The rich pastiche of cultural symbols and stylistic conceits has somehow made a perfect marriage with this exemplar of American Gothic.
Miss Heath apparently liked her front porch so much that she had it copied some years later on number 58.
- Allentown Association (Online March 2015)
1869 Buffalo Directory - Courtesy of Dana Saylor
Sources:
- Classic Buffalo: A Heritage of Distinguished Architecture, Andy Olenick (Photographer), Richard O. Reisem
- Buffalo Architecture: A Guide. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981
See also: Highlights of Buffalo's History, 1867
